Albedo is the fraction of sunlight that is diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 to 1.
Satellite temperature measurements are inferences of the temperature of the atmosphere at various altitudes as well as sea and land surface temperatures obtained from radiometric measurements by satellites. These measurements can be used to locate weather fronts, monitor the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, determine the strength of tropical cyclones, study urban heat islands and monitor the global climate. Wildfires, volcanos, and industrial hot spots can also be found via thermal imaging from weather satellites.
An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are found in Antarctica and the Arctic. The boundary between the floating ice shelf and the anchor ice that feeds it is the grounding line. The thickness of ice shelves can range from about 100 m (330 ft) to 1,000 m (3,300 ft). The world's largest ice shelves are the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. When a large piece of an ice shelf breaks off, this can lead to the formation of an iceberg. This process is also called ice calving.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a satellite-based sensor used for earth and climate measurements. There are two MODIS sensors in Earth orbit: one on board the Terra satellite, launched by NASA in 1999; and one on board the Aqua satellite, launched in 2002. MODIS has now been replaced by the VIIRS, which first launched in 2011 aboard the Suomi NPP satellite.
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers. Masses of ice covering less than 50,000 km2 are termed an ice cap. An ice cap will typically feed a series of glaciers around its periphery.
The enhanced vegetation index (EVI) is an 'optimized' vegetation index designed to enhance the vegetation signal with improved sensitivity in high biomass regions and improved vegetation monitoring through a de-coupling of the canopy background signal and a reduction in atmosphere influences. EVI is computed following this equation:
Ocean color is the branch of ocean optics that specifically studies the color of the water and information that can be gained from looking at variations in color. The color of the ocean, while mainly blue, actually varies from blue to green or even yellow, brown or red in some cases. This field of study developed alongside water remote sensing, so it is focused mainly on how color is measured by instruments.
An atmospheric radiative transfer model, code, or simulator calculates radiative transfer of electromagnetic radiation through a planetary atmosphere.
Radiometric calibration is a general term used in science and technology for any set of calibration techniques in support of the measurement of electromagnetic radiation and atomic particle radiation. These can be for instance, in the field of radiometry or the measurement of ionising radiation radiated from a source.
Sea ice concentration is a useful variable for climate scientists and nautical navigators. It is defined as the area of sea ice relative to the total at a given point in the ocean. This article will deal primarily with its determination from remote sensing measurements.
The airborne visible/infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS) is the second in a series of imaging spectrometer instruments developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for Earth remote sensing. This instrument uses scanning optics and four spectrometers to image a 614-pixel swath simultaneously in 224 adjacent spectral bands.
A vegetation index (VI) is a spectral imaging transformation of two or more image bands designed to enhance the contribution of vegetation properties and allow reliable spatial and temporal inter-comparisons of terrestrial photosynthetic activity and canopy structural variations.
Susan Ustin is an American earth scientist who is the Distinguished Professor of Environmental Resource Science at the John Muir Institute for the Environment, University of California, Davis. Her research makes use of remote sensing technology to understand the characteristics of plant communities.
William Joseph Campbell was a ranking meteorologist for the United States Geological Survey. He was a pioneer of the remote sensing of the polar regions and an expert on polar ice.
Remote sensing in oceanography is a widely used observational technique which enables researchers to acquire data of a location without physically measuring at that location. Remote sensing in oceanography mostly refers to measuring properties of the ocean surface with sensors on satellites or planes, which compose an image of captured electromagnetic radiation. A remote sensing instrument can either receive radiation from the earth’s surface (passive), whether reflected from the sun or emitted, or send out radiation to the surface and catch the reflection (active). All remote sensing instruments carry a sensor to capture the intensity of the radiation at specific wavelength windows, to retrieve a spectral signature for every location. The physical and chemical state of the surface determines the emissivity and reflectance for all bands in the electromagnetic spectrum, linking the measurements to physical properties of the surface. Unlike passive instruments, active remote sensing instruments also measure the two-way travel time of the signal; which is used to calculate the distance between the sensor and the imaged surface. Remote sensing satellites often carry other instruments which keep track of their location and measure atmospheric conditions.
Lorraine Remer is research professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County known for her work on developing algorithms to study aerosol particles using satellites with a particular focus on how aerosols impact climate processes.
Jacob Sebastian Haugaard Mernild is a Danish professor in climate change, glaciology and hydrology, who is the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Southern Denmark. Mernild has been an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author for the United Nations since 2010. Initially a contributing author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, he was lead author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
Qihao Weng is an American geographer, urban, environmental sustainability, and remote sensing scientist. He has been a Chair Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since July 2021, and was the Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Change and is a professor of geography in the Department of Earth and Environmental Systems at the Indiana State University.
The Earth Science Decadal Survey is a publication of the United States National Research Council that identifies key research priorities in the field of Earth Sciences with a focus on remote sensing. It is written and released at the request of three United States government agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The survey is produced by the Committee on the Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space (ESAS) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Space Studies Board, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. Agencies like NASA use the recommendations from the decadal survey to prioritize funding for specific types of scientific research projects.
Martha Carol Anderson is research scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture. She is known for her work in using satellite imagery to track droughts and their impact on crops. In 2022, she was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
